ABOUT NEW YORK; Oops! The Mysterious Case of the Twice-Stolen Motorcycles

By JIM DWYER

Published: September 7, 2012

news conference in July to announce that a cast of many, many good guys had broken up a gang of motorcycle thieves who, it was believed, were so voracious that they had been responsible for most thefts of cool bikes in New York City during the preceding year.

The crooks had worked like conjurers, the authorities said, snatching the motorcycles off the street and loading them into vans within seconds.">

With entirely justifiable pride, the police commissioner and the Manhattan district attorney held a news conference in July to announce that a cast of many, many good guys had broken up a gang of motorcycle thieves who, it was believed, were so voracious that they had been responsible for most thefts of cool bikes in New York City during the preceding year.

The crooks had worked like conjurers, the authorities said, snatching the motorcycles off the street and loading them into vans within seconds.

Now, the custom on such occasions is for all the people who worked hard on a case -- including investigators from city, state and federal agencies -- to line up alongside their bosses on the podium and do a standing lap of honor around the contraband, usually piles of money or bricks of dope or stacks of assault weapons.

As it happened, the charges, in addition to motorcycle stealing, included illegal gun trafficking, so there was some nasty hardware on the table. But this was not just another opportunity to take a picture of seized guns.

Also ready for their close-up at the news conference were some of the name-brand motorcycles that had been swiped: Kawasakis and Yamahas and a Ducati Monster. They, too, were lined up so that everyone could see and photograph them in all their gleaming pulchritude. Even more were parked outside Police Headquarters. A total of 63 had been recovered.

Two weeks ago, officers went to a police parking lot in the Bronx where many of the recovered motorcycles had been stored as evidence during the investigation over the past year.

Seven of them were gone. The stolen motorcycles had once again been stolen. Now you see them, now you don't.

''The lot is fenced, but not locked or not guarded in the sense that there are guards, private or otherwise,'' Paul J. Browne, the chief police spokesman, wrote in an e-mail on Thursday. News of the thefts was first reported on the Web site DNAinfo.com.

''Auto crime personnel who handled the original case discovered the bikes missing on Aug. 24,'' Mr. Browne said. ''It is believed the bikes were stolen shortly before then, possibly the day before.''

Most of the suspects charged as being part of the gang -- there were 33 -- are still behind bars, and it is not believed that any of them or their cronies were able to resteal the bikes. The likeliest theory, said one investigator who spoke only on the condition that he not be identified, is that the thefts were an inside job, a galling prospect to the people who worked hard to build the case.

Mr. Browne said the Police Department's Internal Affairs Bureau was investigating. He noted that the batteries had been removed from the motorcycles and the wheels locked to make them harder to steal.

''Since the bikes were disabled, it's unlikely they were driven off themselves, but possibly loaded into another vehicle, like a van, and driven off the lot,'' Mr. Browne said.

The investigation into the motorcycle gang originated with the report of one theft of a bike in Lower Manhattan and a detective who alerted the office of Cyrus R. Vance Jr., the Manhattan district attorney. Deploying undercover police officers as buyers and using wiretaps and phone-tracking devices, the authorities collected and assembled evidence for more than a year.

Evidence does sometimes disappear -- magically and infamously. From March 1969 to January 1972, about 400 pounds of heroin and cocaine was signed out of a police evidence room in SoHo and replaced with cornstarch and flour. A quarter of the haul was heroin that had been seized in 1962 as part of the French Connection case. More than 40 years later, that theft remains unsolved, though there is no shortage of suspects or theories, many of them involving traitorous officers in league with drug dealers.

The restolen stolen motorcycles are not in the same league, and prosecutors say that their original cases remain sturdy, given that the evidence includes videotapes and audiotapes. Still, word of the thefts did not darken the mood of lawyers representing those accused in the case.

Paul V. Prestia, the lawyer for Selwyn Mills, 23, a Brooklyn man described by the authorities as a ringleader, said he expected the prosecutors to improve their plea-bargain offer.

''Pretty ironic that the stolen motorcycles were stolen from the N.Y.P.D. storage pound,'' Mr. Prestia said.

Abracadabra.

PHOTO: Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly announced at a news conference with District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. of Manhattan in July that the authorities had broken up a crime ring ''that made motorcycles disappear and illegal guns appear.'' (PHOTOGRAPH BY MANHATTAN DISTRICT ATTORNEY'S OFFICE)

news conference in July to announce that a cast of many, many good guys had broken up a gang of motorcycle thieves who, it was believed, were so voracious that they had been responsible for most thefts of cool bikes in New York City during the preceding year.

The crooks had worked like conjurers, the authorities said, snatching the motorcycles off the street and loading them into vans within seconds.">